Solving Health Insurance Policy (Healthcare Costs)

Potential Solutions

“The cost and quality of the U.S. healthcare system is one of the most prominent issues facing everyday Americans. It is a top policy concern for voters, a key indicator of economic efficiency, and a significant driver of the national debt.” – Peterson Foundation

While all developed countries have an aging population like the USA’s infamous Baby Boomers, countries with lower health care costs and superior health outcomes as compared to the USA all have in common the following solutions:

• Single payer health insurance.  The US spends over 20% of our health care costs not on healthcare services but on the administration of insurance claims, 19% of which are declined.  Medicare has a much lower administrative cost, approximately 2% and denies fewer claims.  The USA could cut 18% of our health system costs (nearly one Trillion dollars) by simplifying our complex and disjointed healthcare insurance market by putting all Americans on Medicare for All.
• Negotiated drug prices with pharmaceutical companies.  The USA is charged 2.78 times more for prescription drugs than other countries (RAND Report) and until 2022 we have been restricted from negotiating drug prices with pharmaceutical companies.  
• Physician assistants and registered nurses provide more of the health care for illnesses that are not complex or life threatening (colds, flu, vaccinations, broken bones, tests, etc.) and general practitioners and expensive specialists concentrate on the most complex or chronic illnesses.

In addition, the USA could

• Fund medical research on the eradication of chronic diseases – diabetes, arthritis, etc.
• Utilize Artificial Intelligence to enhance our research to make research yield solutions faster and with better data to support conclusions.

Join In.  Suggest solutions.

What do you think?  What could lower our healthcare costs in the United States and extend life expectancy?  Remember, comments must stay on topic and not be defamatory of anyone.  Solutions to problems is what this UNSTUCK Blog seeks.

Additional information is provided below to guide this discussion – Current Situation, Historical and Constitutional context.  Given the increased influence of religion in our country at the present time, there is also information on religious perspective on this topic.

Current Situation

World Health Systems provided data in 2019 that the USA spends twice as much ($10,658/person) on health care than many developed countries – compared to Canada ($5,116), Japan ($4,463), Netherlands ($5,341) and the United Kingdom ($4,269). In spite of these additional costs, the USA yields lower life expectancies than these countries (78.7 vs 80+ years).  The Kaiser Family Foundation notes that this situation hasn’t changed and has gotten worse – In 2023 the USA spent $4.9 Trillion on health care ($14,570/person) which consumed 17.6% of our GDP (up from 5% of GDP in 1960).

Medicare is not fully funded – Medicare costs are a very large part of the USA’s deficit spending.  In 2024 Medicare’s budget was $865 billion while it’s FICA receipts for Medicare (Federal Insurance Contribution Act), aka payroll deductions, were only about $400B.  Medicaid, which funds the Affordable Care Act, costs another $618 billion.

Four out of 10 Americans have medical debt, nearly 100 million people.  So, it isn’t only the federal government that has a deficit for medical costs, but so do many Americans who could face bankruptcy if they can’t pay off this debt.

History

Health care was not a significant part of the federal budget until 1946 when the Hill-Burton Act funded the construction of hospitals. In 1960, the Federal Employees Health Benefit Act was signed into law, then in 1965 Medicare and Medicaid were added to the Social Security Act and President Lyndon Johnson signed that law.

Since World War II most working Americans and their families, got health insurance coverage from their employer, but this left many Americans uninsured who worked for employers who didn’t provide health insurance or who were not able to work and were not yet eligible for Medicare.  During this time medical bills were the number one cause for family bankruptcies.

In 2010, President Obama signed the Patient Protections and Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) into law.  It protected patients from denial of coverage due to pre-existing conditions, eliminated lifetime caps on coverage and provided subsidized individual medical insurance managed by state-run insurance exchanges.  In 2016 President Trump eliminated the individual mandate in Obamacare as many Americans did not like being required to have medical insurance, since many did not qualify for the subsidies and ACA insurance policies were more expensive than they could afford.

Then the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, was signed into law by President Biden in 2022, which finally provided authority for the federal government to negotiate lower prescription drug costs for people on Medicare and therefore reduce drug spending by the federal government.

US Constitution

There is no reference to medical care in the US Constitution.  So, therefore there is no guidance from our founding fathers on how to fund or manage American’s health care.

Bible

Similarly, there is no reference to society-wide medical care in the Bible.